Meta is turning to private capital to bankroll what it says will be its largest data center development anywhere in the world, signing a financing arrangement valued at roughly $27 billion with alternative asset manager Blue Owl Capital. The move comes as Big Tech accelerates spending on the servers, chips, and power-hungry facilities needed to support rapidly expanding artificial intelligence efforts.
The agreement, announced Tuesday, is Meta's biggest private-capital transaction to date. Under the structure, Meta will keep about a 20% equity stake in the Louisiana project, while investment funds managed by Blue Owl will hold the controlling share. Blue Owl is contributing about $7 billion in cash to the joint venture, and Meta is set to receive a one-time payment of approximately $3 billion.
The project—known as Hyperion—will be built in Richland Parish, Louisiana, and is expected to provide more than 2 gigawatts of computing capacity. That level of "compute" is designed to support training large language models, the technology that powers systems like ChatGPT and Google's Gemini.
Blue Owl Co-CEOs Doug Ostrover and Marc Lipschultz described Hyperion as a major-scale undertaking meant to match the pace and magnitude of demand for next-generation AI infrastructure. Their comments underscore a broader trend: leading technology firms are pouring unprecedented amounts of money into data centers and advanced computing to stay competitive.
That spending wave is already enormous. Morgan Stanley estimates that companies including Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and AI-focused operator CoreWeave are collectively on pace to spend about $400 billion on AI infrastructure this year alone. Meanwhile, OpenAI has recently entered multiple agreements that could exceed $1 trillion in total cost to secure around 26 gigawatts of computing capacity—an amount often compared to the electricity needed to power roughly 20 million homes in the United States.
For Meta, the Blue Owl partnership is also a financial strategy, not just a construction plan. Chief financial officer Susan Li called the transaction "a bold step forward," and Meta has reportedly signed leases for the facility that start with a four-year term and include an extension option. The company also expects the site to support more than 500 jobs once it becomes operational.
Industry analysts say the structure gives Meta flexibility at a time when AI investment is both urgent and uncertain. Alvin Nguyen, a senior analyst at Forrester, said the deal helps Meta reduce its risk exposure by limiting how much capital it needs to commit upfront, even if that means giving up a larger ownership slice. He added that it could also reduce the company's reliance on debt tied to equipment and real estate, offering some protection if enthusiasm around AI infrastructure cools sharply in the future.
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